Flow
by Lanonima
Summary: Lady Lyndis is gone. Hector and Lilina struggle to find their way in her wake.


A knock dragged Lilina's eyes up from the history text splayed in front of her. It was no big loss. She hadn't been able to concentrate anyway.

Lord Hector stood in the library's doorway. He looked unusually grim dressed as he was all in black. The only pop of color was the gold chain around his neck, the necklace he never took off. He came into the room, grabbed another chair by the back and dragged it over next to her.

"I'm sorry I haven't been around much lately," he said as he sat.

Lilina nodded, trying to seem serious and mature. "It's okay."

"No, it isn't. Have you been...all right?"

She considered that. "I'm lonely," she said, and tried not to let it sound whiny. It wasn't as if she didn't understand. Young though she was, her parents had never coddled her. Plagues, she knew, were serious. They could not be cured or lessened by healer's magic, only by medicine and rest and luck. They could not be kept out by castles and armies.

It was for the best that Roy and the other Lords' children had been sent home to their parents. It was for the best that Cecilia had returned to Etruria. It was for everyone's good that Lord Hector worked long hours to organize and protect his country.

Everyone's good but Lilina's, and who was she against the whole of Ostia?

She had not seen her father since the funeral.

"I'm sorry, kiddo," he said, and pulled her into one of his crushing hugs. She returned it as strongly as she could, not at all worried about creasing the delicate black velvet of her bliaut. "From now on it'll be better. I'll be around more." He ruffled her hair as he always did, musing it, and Lilina scowled.

"Dad!"

Hector smiled. It was a faint smile, a little sad, not at all like the exuberant grins he usually gave. Regardless, it was a smile, the first of his Lilina had seen in days.

He reached over and shoved the history text away. "You're old enough now to join me in my office, start learning something a little more practical."

"Really?" Lilina smiled too. She had begged him to be able to help before, only to be told that she was too young. That had stung. She wasn't too young to know what was happening, but she was too young to help. Lilina was someone who liked to have things to do. She liked to be busy, to be useful.

Her father nodded and slung an arm around her shoulders. "Really. You are Ostia's heir. It's high time you learned about her." He paused. "But before that, it's time for The Trip."

He said it with gravitas, enough that Lilina could hear the capital letters in his voice.

She did not have to ask what trip. There was only one, the annual pilgrimage that had marked and measured her life. She said nothing.

"Your mom..." Hector closed his eyes. For the first time he did not seem like the strong Lord Hector, her unbeatable father. Illness had done what enemies and armies could not. "I think your mom would want us to go. After all, as she said: _life, like a river, must flow ever onward_."

The final words were said in Sacaean and he stumbled over them. Not from any lack of ability, Lilina knew. He spoke Sacaean fluently, as did she. As had Lady Lyndis, who had taught them both, who was no longer around to tease them with a store of proverbs she swore were real and Lord Hector accused her of making up.

Grief rose up in Lilina too, and she quashed it, angry at herself. She had cried for her mother already, cried and cried and cried herself sick with anguish. But both of her parents were strong, had been strong, and Lilina wanted to be like them. She didn't want to cry anymore.

"We should go," she said. "I want to go." Even as she said it, she wasn't sure if she actually wanted to go, or if she just wanted to leave the oppressive pall hanging over Castle Ostia. It would be good, she thought, to be somewhere that people were not clad in black, that they did not lower their voices and hurry past when they saw her.

Hector smiled another sad smile and ruffled her hair again. "Your mom'd be proud of you, the way you're holding up. I'm proud of you too. I love you, baby girl."

Lilina leaned over and hugged him, blinking furiously to keep her eyes dry. His hand rested on her back, warm and solid. Comforting. "I love you too," she said.

The trip started on time as it always had, the only difference was that Lady Lyndis was conspicuously absent. Her favorite horse, a handsome bay mare, stood without her, waiting for Hector to saddle her up with Lilina's gear.

Lilina knew that her parents had started this tradition many years ago, long before she was even born. It was Lord Hector's birthday present to her mother, a three week stretch of time where they did not need to be Lord and Lady Ostia, where Lyndis did not have to mold herself into some pleasing shape under the eyes of the court. For these three weeks each year she could simply be herself, Lyndis, daughter of the Lorca.

They rode the whole way on horses she had bred herself, the sleek Lycian bloodlines given a new depth and endurance by the inclusion of blood from Sacaean plains horses.

While on the plains they moved constantly, riding most of the day, hunting their own food, and sleeping in a tent or under the stars depending on the weather. With Lady Lyndis in charge, the trip passed by as smooth and natural as a horse's gallop.

This time things went wrong almost immediately.

It was always an unadvised trip, the ruling family leaving for several weeks without even an escort. Each year Lord Hector and Lady Lyndis argued against their advisers. This year was no exception, save for the inclusion of new ammunition.

"My Lord," wheedled one of the councilors, General Leygance, "Ostia is only recently freed from crisis. It is unwise to leave at this time."

"The crisis is past," Hector said, saddling the horses. "My seneschal, Marian, can run things in my absence as she always does."

"There is more at stake now," said another, Lieutenant Devias, cutting in so smoothly that even Lilina could tell they had rehearsed it. "Ostia has no Marchioness now, and no heir-"

Hector had been attaching the saddlebags to the pack horses. At these words he whipped around, quick as any warrior to rise to threat.

"Ostia has an heir, my daughter."

"A girl-"

"The heir," Lord Hector repeated with venom. "Lady Lilina. I shall announce it formally when I return." He took one step forward and both men stepped backwards hurriedly. "As for the other matter, Ostia shall have no bride save Lyndis. And if, _if_ , I were to change my mind, it would not be mere fortnights out from my wife's funeral!"

He looked every inch the warrior then. Even Lilina shrunk back. He was taut as a drawn bowstring. Standing at his full height he towered over even the tallest of his councilors, let alone these two. His eyes glinted dangerously. It was clear that the two men had given him the excuse, the victim, he had been looking for.

"Lilina, love, wait outside."

Lilina did not balk. She fled the stable and waited by the courtyard fountain. Her father would surely bring the horses out when he was done.

Although he deservedly vented his spleen on his wayward advisers, it seemed the display had been a harbinger. Bad luck dogged their journey, from an ill-placed pebble temporarily laming one of their horses to a persistent storm system they could not seem to ride out of.

Worst of all was the silence.

Lilina realized that coming here was a mistake on their first day, when the plains stretched around them in endless, twinned expanses of grass and sky.

She thought her father realized it too, but he said nothing and neither did she.

The silence stretched between them, as far as the grass or sky, maybe even farther.

They had always been a family. Lilina had never been handed off to a string of wet nurses and nannies and tutors. Her parents had raised her, together. Her playroom had been the rug on the floor of Hector's big office. Her lessons with the other royal Lycian children had terminated in dinner with her parents, even if they were state banquets. Never had she been shut out, ignored.

They had always been a family, fitted together as closely as three people could be, in spite of her parents' occasional and impressive displays of temper.

Now there was a piece missing. It was as if, with Lady Lyndis gone, the two she'd left behind did not quite fit together, and could not seem to close the gap on their own.

Lilina had been lonely. She had not truly realized how busy Ostia Castle was. How the bustle and noise of people living around her had served to ward off despair.

It was hard to hide on the plains, even from yourself.

She tried, and her father tried, but it was not the same without her mother there.

They kept the trip mostly on schedule, until they reached the place where Lyndis' parents had died. Each year the three stopped there there briefly so Lyndis could pay her respects. Now she could join them. It was there that Hector decided to scatter her ashes.

In Lycia, burial was more common. But for the people of Sacae, funeral pyres were the norm, and that had been Lyndis' wish, so she could be returned to the plains she loved so much.

Lilina watched the ashes carried on the breeze and understood. The plains had always been her mother's home, even when she resided in Ostia.

The plains were not Lilina's home, for all that some of their blood flowed in her veins. She was not comfortable here, not without her mother as her guide.

It had been only a week. They had not yet crossed the plains. Had not yet visited Bulgar, nor the shrine of the mani katti – returned there by courier after her mother's death. They had not yet visited their allies the Kutolah and seen her mother's friend Rath and his daughter, Sue.

Watching the ashes, Lilina understood. She did not want to do any of these things. She reached over and tugged on the black silk of her father's sleeve.

Usually on the plains they spoke Sacaean, but so far this time they had not. Lilina did not speak it now as she met her father's blue eyes with her own.

"Dad? I want to go home."

Lilina understood. Ostia was her home, the castle and the people and her father, the responsibilities that awaited here. That was where she belonged, not this strange and alien landscape.

Hector took her hand in his own. "Me too, baby girl. Me too."

Lord Hector returned the empty urn to his saddlebag and helped Lilina mount the bay mare.

Lilina did not look back as they turned their horses towards Ostia. Her mother, she thought, would understand.

Nothing would be the same without Lady Lyndis there. To try and pretend otherwise would be both painful and foolish. Living without her was going to be painful anyway, but at least Lilina would have something to focus on in her future.

Life, after all, must flow ever onwards.


End file.
